The Republicans have a message contradiction problem in the aftermath of the Supreme Court health care decision. They always knew that they had one with Mitt Romney on the top of ticket; Obamacare is modeled after Romneycare. In any other slice of the historical timeline, Romney would be bragging that people in Massachusetts LIKE their health care system, as you can see by this nonpartisan, independent poll.

So while the rest of Republican World jumped on the fact that the Supreme Court called the payment for uninsured folks who are able but unwilling to pay for health insurance “a tax,” on Monday Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said, no, it wasn’t a tax. It was a “penalty.” As in Romney agrees with Obama.

Anyways, here’s Fehrnstrom’s not-a-tax moment. That “thwack” you hear in the background is conservative Republicans slapping their foreheads.

Coincidentally, the National Republican Congressional Committee — the folks charged with preserving the GOP majority in the House — just launched a national campaign riffing off the health care law. In California, it targets Democratic incumbent Reps. Jerry McNerney, Lois Capps and John Garamendi, who all fervently support it.

Aside from being the first TV political ad we’ve seen that features no sound — only texting (What is this, “The Artist”?) it contains a major Lie, Half-Truth and Contradiction, which we pointed out Sunday. In the ad, one of the lines is “Here come the Medicare cuts.”

No, the health care law DOES NOT CUT Medicare. It cuts the rate of increase in it over a decade. See our LHC box here.

Here’s the NRCC ad:

Update by Rick Dunham (4:50 p.m.):

Mitt Romney today told CBS News that he disavowed Eric Fehrnstrom’s comments and believes that the penalty provisions contained in ObamaCare are indeed a tax. The Obama campaign quickly released this response video with Romney explaining the penalty provisions in RomneyCare.

Two days after his top adviser insisted otherwise, Mitt Romney on Wednesday told CBS News chief political correspondent Jan Crawford that President Obama’s individual mandate – upheld last week by the Supreme Court – is “a tax.”

“The Supreme Court has spoken, and while I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it’s a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee told Crawford in an exclusive interview, referring to the court’s 5-4 ruling that largely upheld the president’s signature health care law, with the individual mandate as a tax…

Pressed by Crawford on whether he had flip-flopped on calling the mandate a tax, Romney turned the table, arguing that the president is the one who’s gone back on his word.

“You can try and say you wish [the court] had decided a different way, but they didn’t,” Romney said. “They concluded it was a tax; that’s what it is. And the American people know that President Obama has broken the pledge he made. He said he wouldn’t raise taxes on middle-income Americans, and not only did he raise the $500 billion that was already in the bill, it’s now clear that his mandate, as described by the Supreme Court, is a tax.”